Front Cover Critique

Today was critique day for the final drafts of the book cover designs.  I got a lot out of the critique & am planning on making a considerable amount of changes to the design.  First & foremost toning down the text colors and making the "gold" more gold, even though creating gold flatly seldom comes out good—that's an issue I've been going back and forth on.  Also making the entire title gold to maintain unity.  Additionally, I am adding detailing to the bridge border and expanding the bridge posts.  The final change I made today involved thinning the separation lines and adjusting the leaves between them.

From here I'm considering changing the script.  Additionally, as well as looking into a possibly alternate image to replace the leaves, as to not imply this story has to do with Canada, but instead about New York during a fall-to-winter shift.

Front Cover Final Draft

This is my final draft per se for "The  Cop and the Anthem" cover.

I tried to make this cover look authentically dated, as the short story was written in the early 1900s. The green background is representative of a green leatherbound backing and the all the text would theoretically be engraved.


Looking back some of my inspiration along the way has included actual vintage books, and more currently Jessica Hische's new Classics series.

Of course my cover is nowhere near as well-executed as my inspirations or even portfolio-worthy, but this was by first stab at Adobe Illustrator, so this assignment will be to me a very large learning experience.  As I recall from hearing Todd Miller of Archer Group speak, I'm in the phase where my abilities are not yet caught up with my aspiration, and I'm both anxious and excited about working through this phase.